Are longer advertising slogans more dangerous? The influenceof the length of ad slogans on drivers’ attention and motor behavior

Justyna Harasimczuk1 & Norbert E. Maliszewski1 & Anna Olejniczak-Serowiec2 & Adam Tarnowski3

# The Author(s) 2018

AbstractThe purpose of this project was to verify whether slogans displayed on roadside advertisements created a distraction for drivers. Inorder to explain the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, Study 1 examined the impact of slogan length on attentionalprocessing efficiency. Study 2 investigated the relationship between the length of the slogan and the motor behavior of respondentsdriving a car simulator. We assumed that slogan length would decrease the drivers’ task performance in both studies. Study 1 wasconducted on a group of 70 participants, who completed a modified version of the Attention Network Test (ANT; Fan et al. Journalof Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(3), 340–347, 2002). The task consisted of visual ads intended to distract respondents from theprimary task. Reaction times were significantly longer when ads had longer slogans compared to shorter slogans. Study 2, involvinga car simulator, was conducted on a group of 53 drivers performing a task of driving in a convoy. Participants were shown billboardswith ads at the roadside in random order (two pairs of corresponding ads with short and long text on it). Participants’ drivingperformance decreased when longer slogans were presented in comparison to the short-slogan condition. In conclusion, we interpretthe results of Study 1 to indicate that longer slogan leads to a greater load of attentional processing. This subsequently leads to areduction of the processing efficiency within attentional systems and further increases the amount of time to resist the irrelevantstimulus. A consequence of this, as shown in Study 2 using a car simulator, is a decrease in cognitive resources necessary for safedriving and therefore worse performance on a driving task.

Keywords Slogan length . Attentional processing . ANT . Road advertising . Distracting information

Introduction

How a Driver Obtains Relevant Informationin a Traffic Situation

Approximately 90% of a driver’s information about the cur-rent traffic situation is provided by eyesight (Boyce 2009).However, only about 1.5 angular degree for which the central

vision mechanism is responsible allows for an acute vision.This mechanism is essential for road maneuvers (Schieber etal. 2009), because it allows for the most effective distinctionbetween the characteristics of the object and for the recogni-tion of the symbols (Rybak et al. 1998). It is estimated thatdistracted driving, understood as a delay in identifying theinformation needed to safely perform a task, caused by aninappropriate allocation of attention causes up to 25% of roadaccidents (Stutts et al. 2001). One of the most salient visualstimuli that competes for a driver’s attention is billboard ad-vertising. Distractors in the driver’s visual field sum up,forming a visual noise which interferes with the ability ofthe driver to effectively process relevant information.Roadside ads are thus a risk factor (Bendak and Al-saleh2010). Although the drivers’ visual field is filled with varioussigns and signals aimed to focus their attention (Kaber et al.2015), studies using car simulators, and often eyetrackingmethods, show that ads are more distracting than other visualstimuli, for example road signs (Kaber et al. 2015).

* Justyna HarasimczukJustyna.harasimczuk@gmail.com

1 Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Christian Philosophy, CardinalStefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

2 Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland3 Motor Transport Institute, Transport Management and Telematics

Centre, Warsaw, Poland

Current Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9955-y

How Roadside Advertisements Capture Attentionfrom the Roadway

First, ads are designed specifically to attract attention. Theycontain various visual properties and persuasive mechanismsto achieve this goal. Adverts can interfere with attentionalguidance through either physical characteristics (e.g. color,brightness, location) working as bottom-up factors or engag-ing top-down processing of information (Awh et al. 2013).

Second, billboard advertisements are located similarly tothe road signs – in a vertical position near the road. Driverlooking for a road signs information, explore the dynamicvisual scene and might be prone to be misguided by the irrel-evant objects, including ads. Additionaly, Specific situationalcontexts can determine the extent of driver’s engagement inreading ads. Just participating in different road traffic scenar-ios can lead to conditions in which certain properties of ad-vertising content may be distracting for different drivers. Forexample, specific situations on the road such as a complexintersection with a number of road signs or a tediously longhighway route may lead to drivers being more easily distract-ed by external factors.

Why the Visual Clutter Might Be Dangerous in RoadSituations

The driver’s perception is optimal when she/he is able to seethings that are relevant to driving safety (other road users,signs, course of the lane etc.) in a complex environment.Proper perception is therefore a function of visual attention,and more precisely - the aspect of attention that is responsiblefor attracting sight to important objects. Visual attention(Posner 1994) is widely studied in road safety research(Wallace 2003). The processes of perceiving, understandingand anticipating together create situational awareness (i.e., theability to detect and understand information that is importantfor safety at a given moment, and anticipate the developmentof the situation in the near future). Situational awareness formsthe basis for the driver’s decisions and thus becomes essentialto the road safety (Farah et al. 2008). However, to date, studieson road safety using various methods such as comparingaccident rates, experiments and observational studies(e.g., Belyusar et al. 2016; Bendak and Al-saleh 2010;Smiley et al. 2005;Wallace 2003), have produced inconsistentfindings concerning the effect of advertising on motor andocular behavior.

Road hazards can also be caused when the driver’s atten-tion is distracted by non-driving content that leads to Blookingwithout seeing.^ For example, Blooking without seeing^ canlead to the inability to identify the subject at which the personis looking and as a result lead to delayed risk recogni-tion and decision-making. It is thought that 30% ofBlooking without seeing^ cases are caused by external

factors (Stutts et al. 2001), including advertising.However, the problem of covert attention is difficult to studyin context of road traffic because it does not have observableimplications such as eye or head position changing (Petersenand Posner 1990).

Examining the Mechanisms Used in Ads Underlyingthe Distraction

Distracted driving as the result of visual stimuli is related toboth the psychological characteristics of the driver (e.g. needs,attitudes, intelligence, personality, psychophysical efficiency,etc.) and the message design. The first factor (psychologicalcharacteristics), may relate to the driver’s ability to pay atten-tion, and is hopefully controlled in the procedure for obtaininga driving license, and in psychological assessment when rele-vant. The second factor can be controlled by legislative solu-tions. The message design includes: movement, light emis-sion, shape of the carrier, and location (Crundall et al. 2006;Izadpanah et al. 2014; Smiley et al. 2005), all of which engagebottom-up attention, as well as the content of advertisementswhich activates top-down processing (Shinoda et al. 2001).

In order to examine what the most distracting properties ofan advertisement are, we can examine the different persuasivemechanisms used (Guttman 2015). Among the distractingproperties of roadside advertisements, the most frequentlystudied include the amount of information contained in themessage (Schieber et al. 2014), the physical properties of theimages such as color and location (Holohan 1979), and emo-tions of different valence (Megías et al. 2014; Megías et al.2011). However, the data is still scarce. Therefore, our re-search aims to provide the empirical data needed to betterunderstand the influence of advertising slogans’ length onthe attentional processes and motor behavior of drivers.

The Role of Amount of Information in Road Hazards

Every visual message in road traffic carries some information.Signs are designed so that this information is comprehensive andsufficient at the same time. The number of times themark is seenby the driver is taken into account, because of the effect ofpriming repetition (Crundall and Underwood 2001). Researchby Di Stasi et al. (2012) on the speed of road signs and percep-tion show that drivers respond more quickly to signs with con-gruent visual information (CVI) compared to signs with incon-gruent visual information (IVI). The longer reaction time wascaused by the fact that IVI had too much information for mentalprocessing, resulting in the drivers trying to ignore these signs(Di Stasi et al. 2012). The effectiveness of two types of roadsigns was similarly studied by Shinar and Vogelzang (2013). Intheir research, 30 traffic signs were set alongside the road usingdifferent combinations of symbols and text (symbol, text, sym-bol along with text). The visual reaction time of drivers was

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recorded, as well as their understanding of the signs’ content. Itturned out that the signs containing a symbol and concise textimproved the understanding of the sign best (Shinar andVogelzang 2013). Kaber et al. (2015) tested the influence ofthe type of signs on the behavior of drivers in simulator drivingconditions, using various types of white-on-blue logo signs.Conclusions for driver performance and attention allocationwere drawn based on the difference found between reactionson types of signs. Mileage guide signs had lower frequency offixation and shorter glance duration than six-panel and nine-panel logo signs. Therefore, to further understand the impactof a complex visual stimulus such as advertising, we controleach of the above-mentioned aspects in our research and con-sider a detailed examination of these in our future research plans.

Advertising Based Mainly on Text Poses a ParticularThreat

Ads based mainly on text are a special type of visual stimula-tion. These include, for example, information adverts, contain-ing addresses and other data to remember, but also all compo-sitions containing the displayed slogan as the main part. Incontrast to other types of advertisements, text ads have anBadvantage^ in attracting the attention of recipients due to theautomaticity of the process of reading words, as described byPrinzmetal et al. (1991) – „words are magic^ (Prinzmetal et al.1991, p. 902). The automated process of word recognition re-quires comparison of perceiving symbols (words) with thestored memory codes and meanings. Even without a consciouscontrol of all meanings being activated. Due to its automatedcharacter the process of word recognition require little cognitivecapacity for literate recipients (Nathan and Stanovich 1991).

People are much faster at reading, than naming pictures.This is perfectly illustrated by the Stroop effect researches,which prove obligatory lexical processing phenomenon(Stroop 1935). And that is because of the visual features ofword-like stimuli that creates its physical structure to whichpeople are sensitive to (Prinzmetal et al. 1991). The researchconfirm that more processing resources are engaged when thereader is being distracted by words than symbol distractors(Reingold et al. 2016). However, some researchers argue thatboth intentionally or unintentionally reading is guided also bythe task goal (Kinoshita et al. 2017).

The driver that has been already initially attracted to theobservation of the visual message, is more inclined to processthe text contained in it at a higher level. Due to the limitedprocessing capacity, such situations might be too demandingto simultaneously perform a safe drive (Nathan and Stanovich1991). For example, text messages convey specific informa-tion, that might be important for the driver for other reasonsthan performing the driving task (i.e. when the information inthe slogan directly corresponds with information the driver islooking for in his life at the time, e.g. buying choices). This

kind of interest in ads might be particularly threatening be-cause the driver may attempt to read such ads carefully toremember the information provided. Also catchy slogansmay capture the driver’s attention to the extent where theywant to finish reading the message either out of curiosity orfor entertainment (e.g. teaser ads). When the driver is involvedin the processing of the message his attention resources –which are necessary to perform the primary task of drivingsafely - are depleted (Kahneman 1973). Considering the phe-nomenon in terms of attentional processing seems to be par-ticularly promising (Posner 1994).

How Much Information in the Slogan Is Distracting

If there is a limit to the amount of information for which thetext on ads becomes too big distractor, the question arises -how to count the amount of information in ads? The slogansdiffer from each other by many parameters related to bothformal characters (font family, font size, color, etc.), textlength (number of characters) and the type of content beingconveyed, e.g. typical vs non-typical expressions, or tabuwords (e.g. expressions inducing strong emotions), etc. Themost commonly used practice is to convert text into informa-tion bits. The more characters create a slogan, the more bits ofinformation it contains. This approach derives from researchwithin Shannon’s information theory (Shannon and Weaver1949), which omits the meaning (semantics) of the message,and focuses only on its syntax (Shannon and Weaver 1949).

Previous research has found a consistent effect of longer texton distraction in cognitive tasks: Longer text results in a greatertask and working memory load or a processing overload(Schieber et al. 2014). Schieber et al. (2014) used the methodof measuring the length of the slogan by counting the number ofwords in their digital billboard study using a car simulator andan eye-tracker device. In this study, participants were instructedto read billboards, displaying slogans composed of 4, 8 or 12words, while driving. Billboards with 8 or more words in theadvertisement, at the speed of 50 MPH, caused a significantdeterioration in the performance of drivers who drifted awayfrom the centerline and subsequently corrected with suddensteering wheel movements. On the basis of these results, theresearchers proposed preliminary guidelines for roadside bill-boards: Dependent on the speed limits on the road (25 or 50MPH), long slogans (8 and 4 words, respectively) should belimited in the driver’s visual field (Schieber et al. 2014).

In conclusion, based on previous research on attention anddistracted driving we assume that decreased processing effi-ciency leads to changes in motor behavior that negativelyaffect safe driving. Slogans of varying length have differentimpacts on processing efficiency due to the different amountsof information that eachmessage conveys. Therefore, the abil-ity to examine the extent to which a slogan results in informa-tion saturation is of great importance for road safety research.

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Current Study

To verify the impact of long and short ad slogans on drivers’behavior we propose two experiments testing: a) reactiontimes in attentional tasks (Study 1), and b) driving perfor-mance in a car simulator when advertising billboards aredisplayed at the roadside (Study 2). The studies engaged dif-ferent groups of drivers (i.e. participants from Study 1 did nottook part in Study 2).

We assessed the changes in processing efficiency of atten-tion as a reaction to different slogans’ length using tasks takenfrom amodified version of Attention Network Test (ANT, Fanet al. 2002) proposed by Weaver et al. (2013). The tool hasbeen based on Posner’s theory of attention (Petersen andPosner 1990). Posner defines attention as a system that directsthe flow of information and controls its validity. This influen-tial theory describes three attention systems, located in specif-ic neuroanatomical areas. Each system has its own function:alerting, orienting, and executive attention. The three systemsare basic to the selection of information for conscious process-ing (Petersen and Posner 1990). The method developed withinthis approach – the Attention Network Test (ANT, Fan et al.2002) - involves measuring the activity of individual attentionsystems. The test consists of a series of trials in which thesubject’s task is to determine in which direction the arrow(signal) is pointing, presented a few centimeters above or be-low the center of the screen of the eye fixation point. Thereaction time and correctness of response are indicators ofthe processing efficiency of attention. The method has manyalternative versions, modified for different research purposes.Description of the tasks we used in this research is presentedbelow (the Study 1 section). Our method consisted of intro-ducing the advertisements as additional stimuli (task-irrelevant distractor) before the tasks performed in the test(see Fig. 2). As this experiment was a part of a bigger project,in this paper we report only the results related to the informa-tion ads (i.e. ads consisting mainly of words). The processingefficiency of attention was quantified by the use of reactiontime measures (Fan et al. 2002). We expect that interferingwith the primary task (determining which direction an arrowis pointing) by displaying advertisements with longer slogans(compared to the shorter slogans) will result in longer reactiontimes (RTs).

In Study 1 we also used eyetracking device to measure eyefixations as an indicator of visual attention allocation. Sinceeye movements are related to the visual attention mechanism,the recorded saccades and fixations of the drivers are conve-nient quantitative indicators of visual attention mechanisms(Wilson et al. 2007). If ocular fixations on areas other thanthe one directly in front of the vehicle (e.g., on a dynamicallychanging advertisement in the vicinity of the lane) increase thedriver’s reaction time, they will also be responsible for increas-ing the distance the vehicle, driven by a distracted driver, will

travel to when changing its trajectory or stopping. This mayhave enormous effect on road safety, especially on high-speedroads where faster speeds will increase distances travelled in agiven time. For example, at 50 km per hour a vehicle will travel2.8 m in just 0.2 s and 13.9 m in a full second. Eye trackingmethods are widely used in driving research (Costa et al. 2014,2018) for they help to measure the detectability of road signs.Giving various measures of the ocular movements, for exam-ple the first fixation duration, they enable researchers to capturethe moment when the road signs or other roadside objects arebeing spotted. Also long or short glances indicate on the pres-ence or absence of a conscious awareness in sign processing(Costa et al. 2014, 2018). In our research we used an eyetrackermeasures to control the participants’ visual attention allocation.

To check if slogan length influenced the motor behavior ofdrivers, we designed an experiment using a car simulator. Thedriving scenario required driving a vehicle in a convoy, whilebillboard ads with slogans of varying length appeared at theroadside. The ads were selected from real advertising cam-paigns and were adapted to the required format. We measureddrivers’ task performance with the ad occurrence, taking intoaccount the distance from the preceding vehicle and the timeto collision with it. As we assume that longer slogans involveconsiderably more attentional processing decreasing atten-tional processing efficiency, we expect that longer advertise-ments will lead to impaired accuracy in the drivers’ assess-ment of the traffic situation. We expected that the task perfor-mance will decrease when the roadside billboards displayedlonger (compared to shorter) advertising slogans. We chosethe visual ads careffuly to control other ads’ features (emo-tional content or color saturation etc.) and thus make sure thatslogans differ only in the amount of information. We de-scribed this procedure in the Method sections of each study.

The pre-condition for safe driving is to maintain the rightbalance between top-down and bottom-up processing(Shinoda et al. 2001; Wickens et al. 2003, therefore payingvisual attention to a redundant information displayed on theroadside ads can negatively affect safe driving. Consequently,we aim to better understand the potential impact of text lengthon driver’s distraction by exploring what this longer distrac-tion of attention may mean. We discuss our results in terms ofamount of information presented in slogans and propose anexploration of other possible measures of slogans’ informa-tion saturation.

Based on the literature analysis, we have chosen some de-mographic characteristics of the drivers to study the impact ofadvertising. The first distinguished factor was the age ofdrivers, the second - experience in driving a car. For example,Edquist et al. (2011) conducted a study on a group of 48drivers in three age groups. Using the driving simulator, theychecked what effect the passed billboards have on the drivingquality. The results showed that the presence of billboardsdistracted the drivers from the road ahead and delayed

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reactions to road signs, as well as increased the number ofmistakes made on the road. This effect was particularly strongin the case of novice drivers (aged 18 to 25, who obtained adriving license less than one year before the test) and evenstronger in the case of older people (people aged over 65).Another study, conducted by Belyusar et al. (2016), providesthe data for comparison of two age groups aged 20 to 29 yearsand 60 to 69 years. All participants met the criterion ofhaving a driving license for at least three years anddriving a car at least three times a week. The findingssuggested that the older people in particular were dedi-cating more visual attention to the roadside at the mo-ment when the advertising appeared. Taking into account thisresults we decided to control the age and driving experience ofparticipants as well.

Study 1: Tasks from a Modified Versionof the Attention Network Test (ANT)

The study tests our assumptions that reaction times will varybased on slogan length and the role of processing efficiency ofattention in this relationship. We expected that the RTs mea-sured after the task with ads with longer slogans will be longercompared to the task with shorter-slogan ads.

Method

We used tasks from a modified version of the AttentionNetwork Test, ANT (Fan et al. 2002) provided by Weaver etal (Weaver et al. 2013). The original test is based on Posner’stheory of attention (Petersen and Posner 1990), which definesattention as a system that guides the flow of information andcontrols its validity. This theoretical approach was used tocreate the behavioral method of measuring individual atten-tion systems computer test of attention networks which con-sists of a series of trials in which an arrow is presented a fewcentimeters above or below the eye fixation point located inthe centre of the screen. The subject’s task is to determinewhich direction the arrow is signaling, and both their reactiontime and the correctness of their response are calculated.Further, other stimuli are presented around the signaldepicting arrows that are either congruent or incongruent withthe expected correct reaction (e.g., an arrow pointing the op-posite direction). The trials with incongruent arrows force par-ticipants to inhibit improper reactions and reject distraction.The measurement enables to calculate the efficiency index ofthe executive control, orienting and alerting attentional sys-tems (Fan et al. 2002).

In the tasks we used, advertising stimuli are presented tothe subjects randomly before the main task which requires areaction. We only measured the impact of advertising on RTsand not the three aspects of attention. Furthermore, we make

use of a shortened version of the test described above (brief-ANT). The tasks we used are based upon a 10-min version ofthe ANT (Weaver et al. 2013) developed by the Centre forResearch on Safe Driving Attentional Network Task (CRSD)More information on the CRSD-ANT method is available atthe company’s website: http://www.millisecond.com/download/library/ant/#sthash. K5oXNvJi.dpuf. CRSD-ANTconsists of 2 Blocks of 64 trial sequences each in which theorder is randomly determined. In the block, the sample se-quences (a total of 64) are as follows: 2 (repetitions) × 4(cue conditions: no cue / center cue /double cue/spatial cue)× 2 (flanker conditions: congruent vs. incongruent) × 2 (targetpositions: above or below) × 2 (target directions: right or left).For each sample the sequence is (one sequence for each cuecondition) as follows: fixation (randomly* chosen presenta-tion time: 400 ms–1200 ms) - > cue (100 ms) - > fixation(400 ms) - > target (1500 ms)- > inter-trial interval(3000 ms). In the tasks we used, the fixation point was eitheran advertisement or a cross. We set a fixed presentation timeof 2000 ms. We chose a 2 s display, because in the transportpsychology literature this is the time considered to be criticalfor safe driving (see Rockwell 1988). Paying attention to ad-vertising for 2 s or longer while driving can create risky situ-ations on the road. The next in the sequence, according to theclassic ANT, was cue, presented in the time of 100 ms.However, we reduced the secondary fixation time from400 ms to 100 ms to reduce the time between advertisingand the response. If real-world advertisements distract driversand if shortly afterwards motorists have to react to traffic sit-uations, longer fixation times would result in a worse adjust-ment of this cognitive task to the situation on the road. At theend, the target (1500 ms) was exposed. The whole experiment(see Fig. 1) consisted of 2 blocks of 48 trial sequences each inwhich the order was randomly determined. In the block(i.e. research stage), the sample sequences (a total of48) were the following 4 (persuasive ads mechanisms)× 3 (cue conditions: no cue/cue 1/cue 2) × 2 (flankerconditions: congruent vs. incongruent) × 2 (target directions:right or left).

We used this method to study eight advertising mecha-nisms of persuasion. Different types of ad contents were de-voted to each mechanism: textual ads (varying slogan length),erotic associations, negative emotions, positive emotions,amount of image, color saturation, teaser, and shape of theformat. All advertisements were first verified in a pilot study,to examine if they adequately reflected the given content andin order to choose ads that did not differ in terms of attractive-ness. This paper will only present the results from the textualad content.

Additionally, for 30 participants we used an eyetrackingdevice – SensoMotoric Instruments system (SMI) iView XHi-Speed (Pellicer-Sánchez et al. 2018) of accuracy 0.5 de-grees - to measure the participants’ eye fixations on ads,

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displayed in a set time of 2 s. The eyetracker has a samplingrate of 500 Hz and is connected a desktop computerand a 16-in. screen placed 50 cm from the subject’seyes. The fixation detection parameters were defaultsettngs of BeGaze software, used in SMI HiSpeed re-cordings, when no specific expectations are formulated.The fixation has been defined as 80 ms recording withmax dispersion 100 px. We used monitor with resolu-tion 1920 × 1080 dpi, so 1 pixel corresponds to approx-imately 0.3 mm. When observing from distance500 mm, fixation window area equals actg((0.3*100)/500), which corresponds to approximately 3.4 degrees.We expected to find more fixations on ads with longerslogans.

Stimuli

Ads from real advertising campaigns were used as stimuli.The images have been adapted to a uniform size format of450 × 300 px and were displayed on a 26-in. monitor with aresolution of 1920 × 1080 dpi. Two pairs of stimuli manipu-lated slogan length (each pair in one block). Each of the fourads contained a single image placed on the left or right side ofthe composition and was no larger than one-third of the ad-vertisement area. Next to the image, slogans of varyinglengths and number of characters were placed on awhite background, occupying about 2/3 of the advertis-ing space. In each pair of slogans, the longer sloganconsisted of more than twice as many characters asshorter one. For example, the first pair has 12 characters(2 words) and 34 characters (6 words); the second pairhas 9 characters (3 words) and 19 characters (6 words).Figure 2 presents the sequence of screens in a trial with someexample stimuli.

The stimuli were chosen in a pilot study (prior to the re-search) on a group of 30 participants that did not took part inStudy 1 nor Study 2. They rated each advertisement on 7-point

Likert scale in terms of attractiveness, clarity, level of beingunderstandable and amount of information (e.g. 1-littleamount of information, 7-high amount of information). From10 pairs of ads we have chosen those that did not vary betweeneach other (short slogan ads vs long slogan ads) in any scaleexcept the amount of information.

Participants

We had 70 adults (44%male) participated in the current study.The average age was 39, we divided participants into three agegroups: 18 to 25 years old (n = 16), between age 26 and 45(n = 17), 46 years old and above (n = 18). Each participant hadto have a valid driving licence and no sight defects.

Results and Discussion

We analyzed the results using t-tests for dependent samples.All measures (except fixation count) are given inmilliseconds.The findings confirm our hypothesis that ads with longer slo-gans decreased RTs in the task that followed the ad. The av-erage RT in trials with ads with a shorter slogan (M = 627 ms,SD = 225 ms) was faster than the average RT for ads with alonger slogan (M = 658 ms, SD = 246ms). The difference wasstatistically significant: t(69) = − 1.799; p = .038 (one-sided);Cohen’s d = .22 (see Fig. 3).

Eyetracking data showed a significant difference inthe number of fixations (‘fixation count’) on ads withshort (M = 7.33; SD = 1.79) and long (M = 8.12; SD =1.66) slogans, t(29) = −3.450; p = .001 (one-sided);Cohen’s d = .63.

Our results suggest that a longer slogan text requires moreintensive attentional processing and/or activates more concep-tual categories which extends the time of stimulus processingat the cost of starting the processing the task appropriate stim-ulus. We interpret this interference effect as the reason fordecreased attentional processing efficiency.

Fig. 1 Diagram showing ourmodification (b) to the originalversion of the ANT (a)

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Study 2: Effect of the slogan’s Lengthon Driving in a Car Simulator

As a part of a larger study using a car stimulator we verifiedthe impact of textual ads (ads consisting mainly of slogans)with different numbers of characters on driver’s distraction.Distraction was measured with the accuracy with which thedriving taskwas completed.We used ads from real advertisingcampaigns: one pair of stimuli with short and long slogans of12 and 38 characters, respectively. Their content (image andtext proportions) were simmilar to those ads used in the Study1, and their size was adjusted to the format of advertisingmedia used in the simulation, which was: 6144 × 2560 px(72 dpi). We assumed that slogans with a larger number ofcharacters, appearing along the road, would decrease atten-tional processing efficiency more than those with fewer num-ber of characters, and therefore, would lead to worse drivingtask performance as measured by a change in the distance tothe vehicle in front of them in a convoy.

Method

An Opel Astra AS 1200–6 car simulator was provided by theCar Transport Institute in Warsaw. This simulator vehicle isequipped with a multiwork image display system covering thewhole visual field in the driver’s view in the range of: 200°horizontal and 40° vertical with the frequency of 60 Hz. Thedistance between the driver’s point of view and the screen is2.5 m. Figure 4 presents the view from inside the vehicle. Thecabin is placed on a mobile platform with six degrees of free-dom to simulate the movements of the vehicle during driving.The cabin is also equippedwith a system of 3monitors that actas mirrors. The description of the driving scenario is presentedin the Procedure section.

Stimuli

The two pairs of ads have been chosen from the pilot study(n = 30) as described in Study 1 in the Method section.

Fig. 3 Mean reaction times intasks with short and long slogans(Study 1)

Fig. 2 The sequence of screens ina trial in the original versi.n ofANT (a) and in the tasks we usedin our study (b)

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Additionally, as the research was a part of a larger projectwhich included stimuli with different persuasive mechanisms,we asked respondents to rate the roadside ads on a 7-pointLikert scale in terms of compliance with their intended expres-sions of sexual, arousing negative emotions, composed of alarge amount of information, attracting attention, expressive,understandable (e.g., To what extent do you agree that: theadvertisement is sexual?). This manipulation check was doneusing a paper and pencil questionnaire.

Procedure

Participants were introduced to simulator driving byperforming a 10-min adaptation drive. The actual driving task,which occurred after a 5-min break, included roadside bill-boards with advertisements appearing in a random order.These stimuli displayed different aspects of advertising con-tent: sexual associations (advertisements depicting women’ssilhouettes revealing intimate parts of the body), ads evokingnegative emotions (social ads depicting situations after roadaccidents or related to domestic violence) and ads containingdifferent amounts of information in the slogan (describedabove). The subjects had to perform the task of driving thevehicle in a convoy while remaining 35 m behind the vehiclein front of them (3 vehicle platooning task, 3VPT). After thecompletion of the drive, participants received the paper andpencil manipulation check questionnaire.

Participants

A group of 53 participants was recruited by an external re-cruitment company and received a fee for participation in thestudy. We wanted to get the most representative sample wecould, which is why we subjected it to the stratification interms of the factors described in the literature of the trafficpsychology as affecting the proper driving of the vehicle.

The average age was 39, we divided participants into threeage groups: 18 to 29 years old, 30–45 years old, over 54 yearsold (28 males, 25 females). The group was diverse in terms ofeducation and place of residence. Their sex, education, expe-rience as a driver, the fact of participation or causing collisionsand road accidents, as well as self-assessment in the field ofdriving a car were controlled. The drivers could have eye sightcorrections (glasses or lenses) if they had sight defects. At thebeginning of the experiment the participants were instructedthat the project concerns road safety topic, and before theproper riding task, they were told to watch the roadside adver-tising if possible.

Results and Discussion

We analyzed the simulated driving task results using t-tests fordependent samples. The manipulation check questionnaireconfirmed that the perceived content of each stimulicorresponded with the intended content. The term Bcomposedof a large amount of information^was more often attributed tocompositions with a longer slogan (M = 3.19, SD = 1.57) thanthose with a shorter slogan (M = 2.33, SD = 1.294): t(55) =−5.651; p < .001; Cohen’s d = .76.

Analysis of the distance-to-the-vehicle-preceding-stan-dard-deviation variable (measured in meters) for ads withshort (M = 1.55; SD = 1.20) and long (M = 2.17; SD = 1.79)slogans, showed that displaying ads with longer slogans at theroadside caused an increased variation in maintaining the dis-tance to the vehicle in front: t(52) = −2.996; p = .004; Cohen’sd = .41.

Analysis of the time-headway-standard-deviation variable(measured in seconds) for ads with short (M = .08; SD = .06)and long (M = .10; SD = .08) slogans, also showed significantdifferences: t(52) = −2.738; p = .008; Cohen’s d = .38. Timeheadway refers to the time when - if the preceding car stopssuddenly – the vehicle driven by the participant will appearexactly in its (the preceding car) position. Thus, it is a goodindicator of a time left to a possible collision. The results showhigher variation rates in maintaining this time interval whenperforming the driving task included roadside ads with longerslogans.

The mean-distance-to-the-vehicle-preceding and mean-time-headway variables did not differ significantly for shortand long slogans. Descriptive statistics for each variable arepresented in Table 1.

To control the participants’ driving experience we com-pared the groups according to the variable Experience, whichwas calculated from the data on drivers monthly mileage, andyears of having the driving license. In this way, two groups ofdrivers were created with a smaller (having driving license upto 11 years and mileage below 850 km per month) and agreater (over 26 years of having driving license and mileageabove 850 km per month) driving experience. We found no

Fig. 4 Screenshot from inside the vehicle while driving in a convoy task

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differences between the two groups of drivers. We found nodifference between groups of long and short ad’s slogans interms of age nor sex groups neither. Descriptive statistics forthe controlled variables are presented in Tables 2 and 3 in theAppendix section..

The findings confirm the hypothesized relation between theslogan’s length and driving task performance. Whendisplaying advertisements with a longer slogan, the driver’sdriving fluency decreased, as measured by a higher variationof the distance kept from the preceding vehicle and in thegiven time-to-collision indicator (time headway). We suggestthat this occurs as a result of a higher information saturation inthe longer slogans which causes decreases in attentionalprocessing efficiency, followed by the observed changes inmotor behavior.

General Discussion

The length of the slogan displayed on roadside advertise-ments, translating into an amount of information present inmotorist’s visual field, may be a critical factor in distracteddriving. The two experiments reported in this paper were de-signed to check the possible effect of billboard advertising ondriver’s attention and motor behavior. We focused on adsconsisting mainly of text. Slogans of different length servedas distracting stimuli both in the attention tasks (Study 1) andin the simulator driving in a convoy task (Study 2). We havedesigned the study in such a way as to avoid loading thesubjects with an additional motor task, such as reading adver-tising slogans aloud (Schieber et al. 2009), which might delayswitching to the basic task (Rogers and Monsell 1995), i.e.,delay the start of processing information from the stimulusappropriate for the performance of the primary task. We alsoused stylistically consistent advertising stimuli, only manipu-lating slogan length, to eliminate unnecessary confounds. Theresults support our hypothesis that longer slogans cause extravisual demands for participants, thereby resulting in less sparecapacity for attentional processing of the primary task.

Results of the first experiment (Study 1) confirmed thatlonger slogans caused a delay in reaction times during atten-tion tasks using a modified version of Attention Network Test(ANT; Fan et al. 2002; Weaver et al. 2013). We propose that agreater involvement of attentional processing decreased theprocessing efficiency of executive control contributing to this

effect. Consequently, as observed in Study 2, there is also areduction in the cognitive resources needed to drive the vehi-cle properly (according to the task’s instructions), and amountof time that the driver can devote to the appropriate motorreactions in order to keep the vehicle in the Field of SafeTravel described by Gibson and Crooks (1938, as cited inCastro 2009). According to the models of driver behavior(e.g. Ajzen 1991; Rumar 1982) the basis of the driver’s actionplan is information Bat the entrance^ regarding the perceptionof individual elements of the situation on the road. Their in-terpretation is that the correctness of perceiving and process-ing information enables motorists to make proper choices andmaneuvers. Roadside advertising creates a specific, external,and driver-independent risk factor in traffic situations. Adscontain information that is essentially task-irrelevant stimulifor the driver. Due to their content and ability to attract atten-tion, they can ‘cheat’ the selective attention of the driver,thereby distracting him or her from the primary task whichis to keep the vehicle in the Field of Safe Travel. According tocontemporary models of visual attention, activation of irrele-vant task objectives in the working memory is a huge sourceof distraction (MacLeod 1991; Wagner et al. 2001).

Therefore, we chose to design an experiment using tasksthat enabled us to measure attentional processing efficiency.Study 1 showed that reaction times were slower with longerslogan ads compared to shorter slogan ads. We therefore con-clude that longer slogans engage attentional processing to agreater extent. Further Study 2 suggests that as a result of thisengagement of attentional processing, drivers performed driv-ing task worse when they were distracted by longer slogan adscompared to when they were distracted by shorter slogan ads.

Previous literature explains distracted driving by suggestingthat the recipient of the advertisement, who wants to finishreading the message, returns their gaze towards the ad thusturning away from the road, which may create risky situations.The likelihood of traffic incidents increases significantly whendriver’s turn their eyes away from the road for more than 2 s(Klauer 2006). The phenomenon is well described by the so-called Rockwell’s 2-s rule (Rockwell 1988), according towhich the driver can take his/her eyes off the road situationfor no longer than 2 s. If the time without information about thetraffic situation is longer than 2 s, the driver may be distracted(Rockwell 1988). Our hypothesis is that it is not looking atadvertisement per se that distracts but rather the fact that theobserver has to process the observed content (and the of

Table 1 Descriptive statistics fort-test results on car simulator datafrom Study 2

Slogans’ length Mean-distance-to-the-vehicle-preceding

Distance-to-the-vehicle-preceding-SD

Mean-time-headway

Time-headway-SD

M SD M SD M SD M SD

Short slogans 34.45 6.17 1.55 1.20 1.35 .28 .08 .06

Long slogans 35.13 6.03 2.17 1.78 1.38 .29 .10 .08

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varying amounts of information conveyed). In particular, ad-vertisements containing sale offers accompanied by phonenumbers and addresses or other data to be remembered areloaded with information. Too much information saturationmay distract the driver’s attention beyond a safe level.

Research on visual search strategies show that the distrac-tion effect is small when one knows what she/he is looking forbut that it increases when they do not and the number and typeof visual stimuli increase the likelihood of being distracted andomit important safety instructions (Hughes and Cole 1984;Wallace 2003). This hypothesis is also supported by empiricalevidence on secondary tasks influencing driving behaviour bymodulating attention (e.g. Klauer 2006). However, we shouldalso consider the relation between distraction and attentionalengagement by roadside advertising and different levels ofdriver’s arousal. According to Hebb’s arousal-performancelaw (Hebb 1955) the relationship between performance andarousal is curvilinear (see also Yerkes &Dodson, 1908). In thecontext of traffic safety this would indicate that too muchboredom and too much stimulation create opportunities to failto correctly perform driving tasks. The opposite of visualoverload (e.g. monotonous landscapes during a tedious drive)provides too little stimuli to force the driver to pay attentionand may also be a reason for unsafe behaviour on the road.Indeed the literature on arousal and driving performance indi-cates that drivers respond faster to targets when arousal is high(Chan and Singhal 2015). However, the role of advertising inthe context of very low-arousal-environments is not so clear.Visual stimuli from outside the vehicle can either help thedriver to tackle their arousal level and focus on the ride, orthe boredom may increase the distracting properties of ads inthe absence of other compelling tasks. The nature of this rela-tionship requires further research. To conclude, we assumethat if there is a possibility to reduce risk factors to minimum,one should do so. This means both reducing the visual clutter(number of ads and their distracting features) especially incomplex road sections (e.g. intersections, junctions, areas ofhigh traffic density) and researching the impact of ads in mo-notonous environments.

The Amount of Information

Another important consideration is the question of how to con-vert the ads’ content to ameasure of the amount of information inthe ad. This is an essential issue with legislative implications. Toanalyse advertising slogans in terms of their involvement, themost obvious practice is to count the number of graphical signs(letters) that make up the slogan. Results obtained this way areeasy to translate into legislative solutions as was done, for exam-ple, by the South African authorities (Departament of Transport2000). In this case, themaximum number of letters, numbers andgraphic characters were specified and converted into bits. Theadmissible amount of information in advertising slogans is, for

example, a maximum of 6 bits alongside national roads and 10bits on a route other than the highway; and if they are numbersthey can contain at most 8 digits. In Saudi Arabia, guidelinesconvert words, numbers, and symbols displayed in the advertise-ment into bits and allow 6 bits in each ad (United Arab EmiratesDepartament of Transport 2013). However, discrepancies in themethods of measuring the distracting content of the ads makes itdifficult to directly translate their legislative solutions to othercultures. Thus, in many countries (including Poland) no legalregulations have yet emerged. Based on our findings we thinkone should be cautious when using 7 or more words in advertis-ing slogans. It is, however, just a suggestion for advertisers andnot a legal provision, as this issue requires further research.

However, we suggest that counting characters or words as ameasure of the amount of information in a slogan might not bethe most ideal solution. According to Gibson (1986, as cited inCastro 2009), the definition of the amount of information hasto be more sophisticated when considering perception in thetraffic context. Gibson claims that instead of thinking aboutinformation in terms of bits, we should relate it to changes inpatterns (e.g., texture or contours) of what one perceives in adynamic environment. For example, words have differentquality and can involve top-down processing to different ex-tents. Their availability in the driver’s working memory orconnection with, for example, strong emotional stimuli canmodulate the distraction effect. According to Castro (2009),the information theory (Shannon and Weaver 1949) providesuseful references for tackling traffic devices informativeness.Information in this influential framework is defined as a re-duction of uncertainty, thus, more informative events or mes-sages are those that are more unlikely to occur. But becausethe degree of uncertainty is difficult to measure in a drivingcontext, other methods are often being employed. We con-clude that further analysis of the slogans entropy (Jelinek1997; Shannon and Weaver 1949) could provide insight intothe understanding of our findings, that differentiate fixationsin different slogans’ length conditions only for one pair of ads.

The amount of information in an advertisement can beanalyzed by taking into account various aspects: the slogan,the image, and the method of persuasion. The more complexthe advertisement (e.g., has more logos), the greater distractorit constitutes (Zhang et al. 2013). Thus, the information loadof the advertisement depends on the whole composition in-cluding the slogan length, logotype, all necessary textual in-formation, and compilation of images (product images, con-texts, graphics) of varying degrees of complexity. While in thecase of a slogan, it is easy to come up with a solution toanalyze the amount of information (e.g. counting the charac-ters), analyzing the ‘information load’ of the image is a prob-lem.We perceive words linearly compared to pictures. It takesmore time but gives more precise semantic information. Weget to know the image ‘immediately’ as a whole and it maycarry many complex meanings (Tversky 2011). The analysis

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of an image in terms of the amount of information is carriedout in very different ways: from counting the elements includ-ed in the composition, to individuals’ assessments of the fea-ture and design complexity (e.g., Pieters et al. 2010), to com-puter calculation of the relationship between characteristics ofpixels (entropy) forming the image (e.g., Marchewka et al.2014). Research on processing information in pictures sug-gests that picture stimuli may distract attention because ofthe impulses they trigger that an observer subsequently hasto cope with. Research on self-control provided by Steimke etal. (2016) shows an effect of 3 types of picture distractors on theunderlying mechanisms of selective spatial attention.Experimental conditions with appetitive (approaching reaction),aversive (avoiding reaction), and neutral (cognitive conflict)stimuli triggered by pictures were compared to non-distractorconditions in attentional tasks, accompanied by eyetrackingmethods. Slower reaction times and error rates were gained forall 3 types of distractors in comparison to the control condition.Eyetracking data showed behavioural effects caused by thedistractors in the form of higher standard deviations for the gazedistance to the target. Additionally, erotic pictures compared toneutral and neutral pictures compared to the control conditionresulted in a higher gaze distance from the target position.

Finally, the mechanism explaining the influence of theamount of information in the slogan on the behavior of driversis more complex than it initially seems. On the one hand, alonger slogan means more time needed to read the advertise-ment. Drivers then drift away from the centerline and then makeup for it with sudden steering movements (Schieber et al. 2014).On the other hand, longer slogans may not absorb the attentionof drivers due to the excess of information: the slogan is toolong, incomprehensible, treated as Ba specific blur^ (Di Stasi et

al. 2012). Thus, we think that future research should look intothe phenomenon of ignoring irrelevant visual information (seeGaschler and Frensch 2009; Gaschler et al. 2015). According toInformation-Reduction Hypothesis (Haider and Frensch 1996)discarding irrelevant information from processing increases withpractice. Drivers in a natural driving environment ignore infor-mation they assume to be too engaging and too threatening inorder to stay better focused on a safe driving. They learn torecognize the redundant information immediately and refuse itall without further processing, using once-for-all strategy(Gaschler et al. 2015). Discarding the irrelevant information isassociated with reduced eye fixations and thereby minimizing acognitive effort. Various explanations of this mechanism (wheth-er it involves more perceptual or conceptual level of processing)are an interesting subject for further testing (Gaschler et al. 2015;Haider and Frensch 1999).

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of Interest On behalf of all authors, the corresponding authorstates that there is no conflict of interest.

Ethical Standards All procedures performed in studies involving humanparticipants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institu-tional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinkideclaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Animal Studies This article does not contain any studies with animalsperformed by any of the authors.

Informed Consent Informed consent was obtained from all individualparticipants included in the study.

Appendix

Table 2 Descriptive statistics for age groups in Study 2

Mean-distance-to-the-vehicle-preceding

Distance-to-the-vehicle-preceding-SD

Mean-time-headway Time-headway-SD

Age group 18–29 30–45 54 <… 18–29 30–45 54 <… 18–29 30–45 54 <… 18–29 30–45 54 <…M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

Short slogans 32.80 5.57 34.24 4.55 36.14 7.85 1.33 .98 1.43 .93 1.55 1.20 1.27 .26 1.33 .20 1.43 .36 .07 .05 .07 .04 .09 .07Long slogans 33.18 6.31 36.08 3.54 35.86 7.60 1.62 .93 2.16 1.17 2.66 2.63 1.30 .29 1.42 .17 1.42 .37 .08 .06 .10 .06 .12 .12

Table 3 Descriptive statistics for men and women in Study 2

Mean-distance-to-the-vehicle-preceding Distance-to-the-vehicle-preceding-SD Mean-time-headway Time-headway-SD

Sex Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women

M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

Short slogans 34.25 5.54 34.68 6.92 1.41 .98 1.72 1.41 1.35 .26 1.34 .28 .07 .05 .08 .06

Long slogans 34.88 5.71 35.41 6.48 1.76 1.15 2.63 2.23 1.37 .27 1.40 .32 .09 .06 .12 .10

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the CreativeCommons At t r ibut ion 4 .0 In te rna t ional License (h t tp : / /creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appro-priate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to theCreative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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